Scotty Barker's Blog

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Monthly Archives: August 2013

It’s been out there, so why don’t you have a video made yet that promotes your business and gets you your share of online video traffic? If it is because you are intimidated by the whole process or are just a little camera shy then I only have one thing to say to you. Get over yourself! If you knew how much business you were losing on a daily basis you would try to build yourself a time machine to go back to the beginning and get a video out there for everyone to see right from the get-go.

Don’t Sleep on Video

A good video can take you from mediocre sales to astronomical sales in very short order. All you need to do is make sure it is professional and that it puts your business in a good light. Everyone with an online business should get a video out there to benefit from all the online video traffic that there is available. The numbers are astounding.

Check out what is out there first thing. You need to see what is selling then make your own version. Try to be creative and as unique as possible. You don’t want someone coming after you because they think you copied their video. You need to know about new techniques and effects that have become popular.

If you still are camera shy then you will need to hire someone to be your spokesperson for the video. Use the good sense that God gave you and pick someone who can represent you and your business accurately. You and your video have to be believable in order for people to come to you to buy your product. If you are not believable your customers will not be your customers, they will be someone elses.

Also, if you do not know anything about shooting a video there are videographers for hire who can help you get the professional quality you need to promote your business and be extremely successful. Professionalism means bigger profits for you. If you put out a rinky-dink video you will probably be laughed off of the internet. Sell yourself and your business to get the traffic you need to be a success.

When your video is complete and ready for posting make sure to get maximum exposure and post it to every video hosting site you can find. Basically, go viral. Getting your video out there for people to see is your main objective as soon as it is finished. Obviously, you will want to look at it first to see if it meets your approval. If it does, do not hesitate, get it out there. Your bottom line depends on it.

And do not forget when you sign up to these video hosting sites to put a link to your website in your profile. Search engines will sprinkle a little love on you and rank you higher in the results pages. This is another source of traffic that goes hand in hand with the online video traffic you have already generated.

Go active as soon as it is finished. Obviously, you will want to look at it first to see if it meets your approval. If it does, do not hesitate, get it out there. Your bottom line depends on it.

Weve spoken about the dangers of getting too specific. Now, lets talk about the advantages of being too specific, at least some of the time.

You want to have your business appeal to as many people as possible. This means that if youre a car repair shop, being able to show knowledge of everything from tires to chassis is a great way to rope in people who are interested in all levels of car repair. Youll be able to establish relationships with these people who will hopefully become repeat customers of yours, and maybe even offer references to others.

Exploring Your Sub-niche To Find New Opportunities

What you want to avoid in general is getting too pigeonholed, as this can cause you to miss out on a lot of business.

However, the fact of the matter is that staying broad and appealing is a good thing, but people do tend to have specific interests. Maybe you know a lot about overall car repair, but you prefer to tinker with the engine. Maybe you like all car brands, but you prefer Jaguars. Humans do tend to gravitate toward increasingly specific levels of mastery depending on their inclinations. Just because you happen to know more about Jaguars than any other brand of car doesnt mean that you should hide your knowledge out of fear of seeming too specific.

The too specific parts of your business can be used to your advantage. These are called sub-niches, and are basically where you can get super specific without losing huge chunks of your audiences.

In fact, being able to use your sub-niche is a great way to really get your business to flow. Maybe there arent that many people in the world who are as psyched about Jaguars as you are, but if you can tap into this sub-niche, you might be floored about how much business theyll give you. People love to tap into others who have similar specific interests, and if you can manage to find the people who are as obsessed about the Jaguar engines as you are, youve probably made about fifteen new best friends. Best friends are excellent for advertising and theyll likely mention you to others who just have general interest in car repair, just because youve connected over Jaguar engines.

The trick is not to let the sub-niche take over the niche. Again, more balance. Maybe you like talking about Jaguars more, but you shouldnt let it keep you from the general help me with my oil change threads on forums. In this way you can stay broad enough to help even the most out of touch layperson as well as the experts in your sub-niche. Behold the power of the sub-niche if used properly just dont let it take over everything else!

There is a big myth about online marketing, and that is internet advertising costs nothing. The fact of the matter is that all advertising costs something. However, one of the biggest advantages of advertising on the web is that you don’t necessarily have to pay with money; at least not to get started. Instead, you can pay with your time. This is great news because it means that virtually anybody can start a business if they can spare some extra time.

Truth is, Advertising Costs Something

You need to consider several factors before deciding what’s best for you and your business. It will take you longer to build an income if you only use free advertising methods, so it’s a good idea to start reinvesting a portion of your initial earnings into paid options as soon as you can.

There are a lot of free ways to market your business online. Some of the better known ones include traffic exchanges, safelists, article marketing, social networking sites, forums and online classified ads. Here is a brief overview of each of these methods.

Traffic exchanges are where you visits a certain number of sites in exchange for people visiting your site. A typical ratio is where you need to visit three sites to get one visit back to yours. You will need to visit each site for about 20 seconds before it counts, but that means others have to visit your site for that amount of time as well. Safelists work in a similar manner, but you have to read email messages as opposed to viewing websites. So, the more sites you visit or emails you read, the more people you will have viewing yours.

Article marketing can be done with little or no internet advertising costs, depending on your ability as a writer. Here you simply write articles that are related to your business. You then submit these to various article directories, and include a link at the end of the article for readers to visit your site.

Social networking sites and forums put the power of communities to work for you. This takes time because you have to focus on building relationships with the people of each community. You have to be careful that you don’t use a “hard sell”, or you will just make people mad.

Online classified ads work just like putting an ad in the newspaper. You will be limited to how many words you can use, but that should help you in choosing your words more carefully. One of the downsides is that the free ads tend to move down the page quite quickly, so you will have to submit ads as often as each site allows. The other problem is that the only people who will be viewing your ad are people using the site themselves to advertise. For the most part, the average internet user will never visit a classified ad site.

Yes, internet advertising costs one way or the other. But if you’re just getting started, and don’t have any money to spend, then it’s good to know that there are plenty of options that only require an investment of your time.

Perhaps, by now, you have already decided to join the 21st century and become part of the video advertising on the internet world. Just like many other smart business people and other individuals. We have gone what video advertising is, the types of businesses and individuals who use this media and the benefits of entertaining potential customers with this type of product.

You have now realized that video advertising is not only more effective, but may end up costing you less money in advertising in the long run. We have also talked about different ways you can do your own marketing using video advertising for free.

Effective Promotional Videos

If you have decided to contact an advertising company about using video advertising on the internet, such as Google or Microsoft, which is now coming out with a new program, you will have many different options as to where your videos can be placed.

Just like television advertising, you will want to reach your target audience. This means that a video advertising a rock band will not be promoted on a website that deals with travel. The wonderful thing about using a professional service is that they know exactly what websites are out there and where to promote your video.

Costs for using a professional advertising agency will depend upon how often you want the video used, the sites you want it to be used on, and the length of the video. Naturally, if you want your video splashed across Yahoos front page, it is going to cost you a lot more than if you want it on a blog that accepts google ads.

The choice will be up to you. Perhaps you own a travel business and are promoting a tour to Cancun. This is a tour that will be all inclusive and is a great deal. Where will it be promoted?

The video can be promoted on websites that are upscale and perhaps designed for either families or couples. For example, if you are advertising a romantic getaway to Cancun, this can be placed on a variety of websites. Dating sites may be one. Websites for jewelry companies can be another. Any site that is designed for romance or married people or couples is a target. Certain travel magazines have websites, this may be an excellent place to advertise your romantic getaway.

Perhaps you are offering a three day stay in Disney World. You will want your target audience to be people with children. There are many different family oriented websites on the internet, parenting advice websites and so forth. The advertiser will know where to find them and how much it will cost to advertise. This is what you are paying for – their expertise of knowing the best websites on which to advertise on the internet.

If you do not want to spend a lot of money but have a quirky type of ad that can generate business and maybe has a little humor to it, it may be advertised on someones blog. Many people have discovered the joy of blogging and certain internet blogging websites offer google ads for bloggers. The ads are free and the person who blogs gets a little bit of money every time someone clicks on your ad. The advertisers know the blogs that get the most traffic and your quirky little ad might just start making the rounds all over the internet.

If you want to place the video ad on your website or on free internet websites that allow videos, you will have to make sure that your contract stipulates that you have the right to do this. While some advertising companies will allow you to promote your own ad, others will not. Some want exclusive rights. If the advertising company actually developed the video ad for you, they will retain exclusive rights and you will not be able to use it anywhere without their written permission.

Video ads can go just about anywhere banner ads go. The beauty of the video ad, however, is that it is more closely paid attention to than a banner ad and you do not run the risk of someone accidentally clicking onto it.

There are literally millions of websites on the internet. Web advertisers are familiar with the traffic that these sites generate. Your fee will be based upon the amount of traffic the website expects to see.

In addition, the length of your video matters a great deal in video advertising. It is best to keep it short. Not only is it cheaper to run the video ad this way, but people generally have a short attention span and something that is too long generally bores them.

Take a look at television commercials prior to embarking on your video ad venture. See which ones you pay attention to and which ones you cant even remember. See which ones you get bored of and dread every time they come on. Your video advertising is similar to this. No one wants to constantly see a long, boring video all over the internet. A short, entertaining video that is used sporadically, however, will generate more interest and may even develop a cult following.

People are crazy about internet videos. They use them on their personal internet community pages such as MySpace and Facebook and often e-mail them to their friends and relatives. This can happen to you. You may come up with an advertisement that is clever, entertaining and brings you instant internet notoriety.

If you decide not to use a professional agency, you will be able to put the video anywhere that is free. You can also act as your own advertising agent and make deals with certain websites yourself. This can be difficult and you should have some knowledge about copyright laws and legal contracts before doing this. And unlike the professionals, you may not know much about the website. Unfortunately, on the internet, websites come and go. You would hate to make a deal and pay money to advertise on a site that closes within the next week.

If you use a professional internet advertising agency, chances are that you will hit your target audience with your video ad and will find it more successful than a banner ad. Your video will be able to go just about any place on the internet that your banner ad can go, or your word ad. The difference will be that more people will pay attention to what you are trying to sell.